WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, novelist and satirist, was born at Calcutta in 1811. His father was in the civil service of the East India Company, and dying young, left his son a fortune of £20,000. The latter, when a boy of seven years of age, was sent to England and placed in the Charterhouse School, He next went to Cambridge, but left the university without taking a degree. His ambition was to become an artist, and he travelled over most of Europe, studying at Paris and Rome. His drawings were not without merit; they were quaint, picturesque, and truthful, but somehow they missed the bright touches of a master hand, He next took to literature, beginning with rare patience and contentment at the lowest round of the ladder under the characteristic name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, or that of Fitz-Boodle, he became a constant contributor to Fraser's Magazine, and wrote for it two of the best of his minor works, "The Great Hoggarty Diamond," and "Barry Lyndon." The establishment of Punch, afforded a congenial field for Thackeray, and his "Snob Papers," and "Jeames's Diary," were hailed with delight by all readers. Their author's reputation was still more advanced by his novel of "Vanity Fair," (1846-1848), published in monthly parts in the style of Pickwick, and illustrated by the novelist himself. Other novels followed, and in 1852-1855, appeared the most richly imaginative and highly finished of all his works, "Esmond," and "The Newcomes." To the grief of all lovers of genius and of noble character, Thackeray was cut off in the fullness of his powers, in his 52nd year, dying alone and unseen in his chamber, on the morning of the 24th of December, 1863.

His strength lay in portraying character rather than in inventing incidents; and in Becky Sharp, Colonel Newcome, Harry Foker, Laura Pendennis and Paul De Koch, he has left us a living gallery.

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